Thursday, October 04, 2007

We Few, We Happy Few

So who needs an autocue?

When IDS gave that toe-curling Quiet Man speech to the Tory Conference five years ago, Lord Max of Hastings nailed it as "the Warmington-on-Sea Amateur Dramatic Society does Henry V". But where IDS failed dismally, yesterday Dave succeeded spectacularly.

The troops are rallied, and filled with an overwhelming urge to charge the Frenchies... well, charge the ramshackle emplacements of this high taxing, underperforming, lyin', cheatin', socialist autocracy anyway.

But of course, while we members were the audience, the top target was Gordo. The media had to be given the speech of a lifetime they demanded, their coverage had to be giant thumbs up, the polls had to be turned, and spineless unappealing Gordo had to be well and truly freaked.

The first bit is done- media reaction has been almost uniformly positive, with the authoritative Sun commenting "GUTSY David Cameron set the Tories alight yesterday as he turned Mission Impossible into Mission POSSIBLE" (see here for racey Sun vid of Gordo's mate Irwin Steltzer oiling his pecs, and telling us how the Tories are now the party of fresh ideas).

The polls are still on their way, but it will be amazing if the gap isn't significantly cut - especially after Gordo's crassly transparent electioneering policy announcements this week.

As we trundled away from the Conference aboard our ancient Blackpool tram, we hardly noticed the rain hammering against the steamed up windows or the water dripping onto our heads from the fizzing light bulbs. The entire top deck was abuzz with anticipation of the fight to come. From Crawley to Chester to Corby, the troops are ready. And oh the joy of inflicting another historic defeat on those glittering self-satisfied ranks of French knights.

Hurrah!

PS As we know, the official business of party conferences is to get good media coverage. Most of us understand that. But it is still very irritating. Part of the media plan this year was to cut the number of seats in the main conference hall so that the media would not be able to get those embarrassing shots of empty seats during unpopular sessions like the one on ecowibble. But of course that meant there were not nearly enough places for the big speeches. In particular, hundreds and hundreds of us fee-paying, leaflet stuffing, street pounding members were unable to get in for Cameron's speech. Can you believe that? Yes, of course you can. Important people like journos and official guests- the ones who were there for free and whose trips are funded on expense accounts- they were all assigned reserved seats. But we members were shut out. In fairness to Cam, he and Mrs C did make their final exit through the overspill area where we excluded untouchables had watched on TV (which of course we could have done at home), and Mrs T was therefore able to get a Golden Handshake (she will never wash it again). But it was pisspoor and will be remembered when people decide whether to attend next year's event in Brum.

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